The previous post of november 14th showed the 9 mates that occur the most frequent during a game. I don't plea that you should ignore the remaining 23 mates though. Since the patterns of those 23 mates occur too in the 9 most frequent ones. For instance Anastasia's mate often manifests itself as a backrank mate, which is on the list of the most frequent mates. It is not a subcategory of the backrank mate though, since it more frequently shows up on the side of the board, not on the backrank.
The list of frequent motifs can be used to decide which categories deserve the investment of more time and energy. Which categories are worth to be divided in subcategories. I showed one elaborated subcategory of the dovetail mate in the previous post. Now I will show you a few other subcategories of the dovetail mate. Just to illustrate what we are talking about. I don't elaborate on those subcategories, because I don't want to immerse you in diagrams.
I described the dovetail mate with the following elements:
- The hammer. Usually the queen that delivers mate.
- The hammer square. Where the queens stands on when she delivers mate.
- The anvil squares. Against which the hostile kings is crushed
- The mate square.; On which the hostile king stands when he is crushed
- The protective piece that covers the hammer square. So the queen is protected when she delivers mate
The preparation.
- Chasing the king to the mate square
- Placing the protective piece
- Exchange on an anvil square. Often by a sacrifice on the anvil square
- Covering the anvil squares by your own piece
- Placing your queen on the hammer square
- Pinning a defensive knight on an anvil square
The verbal description above shows the relation of the categories with the tree of scenarios. The categories are not generated at random, but have a clear relationship with what system 2 should be thinking about.
 |
| 1. black to move. Saccing a piece on the anvil square |
 |
| 2. black to move. Forcing a defensive piece to the hammer square |
 |
| 3. White to move. Queen and rook form a hook |
 |
| 4 white to move. Queen and knight form a hook |
 |
| 5. black to move. Chasing the king to the mating square |
 |
| 6. white to move. Hammering the king against a diagonal of your bishop |
So I finally revealed the magic. All mates and all tactical motifs, have a tree of scenarios related to them. There is nothing mysterious about that. The question is simply: what makes the mate work. What makes the tactical motif work? The answer reveals a tree of scenarios what makes the tactic work.
ReplyDeleteThat tree of scenarios is a generalization of the tactical motif. It is piece and location independent. The tree of scenarios describes the functions which are at work. A dovetail mate works anywhere on the board and with any pieces. But you must have a hammer and an anvil.
The patterns that should trigger us with "hey, we have a dovetail mate here!" are related to the tree of scenarios that govern the dovetail mate. That patterns must be identified and absorbed.
I proved it works this way with the dovetail mate. But it must work with all mates and all motifs, It can't be otherwise.
The good news is, the tree of scenarios per tactical motif isn't very broad. Nor is the amount of tactical motifs very vast.
So we unearthed a close relationship between system 2 and system 1. System 2 follows the tree of scenarios related to the tactical motifs while system 1 burps up the related patterns.
ReplyDelete